An open letter to OPSEU’s Presidential candidates
Three candidates are running to be the next president of OPSEU/SEFPO. 26% of the union’s members are disabled.
So how has accessibility factored into these three campaigns?
The intersection between disability and labour
As someone with an invisible illness, I am very aware that visibility is not an accurate indicator of an issue’s severity or prevalence. This is particularly true when considering the experiences of disabled workers in Canada.
From the sidelines
There is a direct link between the disinterest in protecting disabled people from COVID to the medical barriers that Erin Gilmer (and so many others) faced and the bureaucratic violence and systematically enforced scarcity that Erin O’Neil (and so many others) faced. As disabled people, we are seen as less: less trustworthy, less important, less human.
Ottawa People’s Commission presentation
In the aftermath of the Freedom Convoy, we must fight to uproot the systemic and legislated ways by which life continues to become increasingly unsafe for Ottawa’s disabled residents. We were not safe then. We are not safe now.
Disabled isn’t a dirty word: Navigating the language around disability
Language is one of the tools that marginalized people have the power to shape and reclaim. It can be a site of exploration, education, and resistance. So what about disability?
Buying St. Brigid's — We don't need more disruption in the ByWard Market
It’s time to stop giving Freedom Convoy supporters the benefit of the doubt.
I am still waiting.
While the immediate danger of the occupation is gone, the sense of abandonment for me is remains. Because the Premier announced this week a total roll back of safety protocols including masking.
All’s fare?
We need to break up with our current fare-based transit model and the pandemic has made this abundantly clear.
Arrested development
When I think about September 11, I think about two young men: Chris* and Carlo. One of them I grew up with. The other, I’ve never met but have become intimately familiar with his untimely death. Both were killed in 2001, an ocean apart—one in Ontario, one in Genoa, Italy.
Big ideas to kick at the darkness
Self accountability is the first step in creating a broader language and landscape in which transformative justice can thrive.
Back to basics
Committing to food justice means committing to the belief that people and communities know what is best for themselves but have been prevented from actualizing that plan because of a history of systemic violence and exclusion.
There can be no reconciliation without a reckoning in Canadian media
Canada will remain ill-equipped to find appropriate and equitable language to address the damage done by our settler colonial state until we have a media system capable of handling this level of nuance.
RPCA New Official Plan Response
On behalf of the Riverside Park Community Association, I spearheaded the new Official Plan response detailing the community’s concerns with the City’s plan for future development in our area and beyond.
COVID-19: Neoliberalism’s Chernobyl
COVID-19 has been called neoliberalism’s Chernobyl with good cause. The capacity of our public system to adapt in the face of a sudden and major threat had been all but undermined by four decades of underfunding, leaving the hollowed out remains scrambling to adjust course.